The Affordable Care Act is an incomplete, incompetent travesty of a law. It fails to deal with rising healthcare costs, it fails to ensure that all American’s have access to healthcare, and it fails to rein in the rampant overpricing in the pharmaceutical industry. All that being said, the ACA is the best that we’re going to do for the foreseeable future. The GOP can make all the political hay they want about the problems with the law and why it needs to be repealed, we need to start moving past this and start having a real conversation about how to repair this law.
Before we move any further, it’s time to talk about the history. Back in 2009 the Democratic Party, led by Obama, decided that now was the time to attempt a major overhaul of the entire healthcare system. There’s an incredible Frontline documentary that outlines the incredibly corrupt and incompetent way in which that law was written, and you should watch it. Basically, members of the health care lobby wrote huge sections of the law and then Max Baucus put those into his version of the healthcare bill which is what largely became law.
We should start having a rational conversation about the real pros and cons of Obamacare. And we should start looking at real parameters for where the law is succeeding and failing. The best examples would be to look at states like California, Arkansas, and Kentucky, as well as Texas, and Florida. The reason why we bring up these five states is because all of them have a huge population of uninsured, but Texas and Florida under their Republican governors refused to have a medicaid exchange, as such the full intent of the law is not being met in those two states. The reason California is important is because it has the second largest population of uninsured in the country, and is fully implementing the law, so if it can work in California, it should in theory be able to work everywhere else. Arkansas and Kentucky are important because they are conservative states who have democratic governors, and fully embraced the healthcare law. We should also be looking at the national price of healthcare and healthcare coverage all across the country for the next 5 or 6 years. This will give us a very good indication of the weaknesses and strengths of the law. Already some have presented themselves. Recently, Congress increased the deductible that small businesses can charge for the insurance programs. It is issues like these that we can clearly see, that both parties need to start working together on.
This election season, when weighing your vote, look for the candidate who is trying to fix real world problems, who is also trying to move this country forward. Look for the candidate who thinks for themselves, and doesn’t tow a party line, who presents a vision for this country showing you where we can go, and not just trying to drag their opponents into the mud.
Willis and law Online 